MSI FX600 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
The FX600 is an attractive and powerful mainstream notebook that has the multimedia chops to serve just about any user looking to be entertained. Read More…

What We Liked…

Strong performance

Superior, punchy speakers

Bright screen

Excellent keyboard layout

Nvidia Optimus technology

What We Didn’t…

Mushy keyboard

Subpar touch pad

Mediocre battery life

MSI FX600 Review

By Marco Chiappetta, reviewed September 12, 2010

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For those who need serious horsepower but want to forgo the flashing lights and polarizing designs of most gaming notebooks, the MSI FX600 offers a compelling compromise. While its gaming scores aren’t exactly Alienware-worthy, you can accomplish all of your work and plenty of play on this $899 system, which spoons up powerful processing performance, switchable graphics, and a nice selection of connectivity options.

MSI is currently offering two F Series notebooks, the Core i5-450M–equipped FX600-002US, which we tested here, and the Core i3-350M–powered FX600-003US. Both machines have suggested retail prices of $899 and are essentially identical, save for the CPU difference and differing optical drives. (The 003US adds a Blu-ray option.)

The external casing of MSI’s F Series notebooks is mostly black, with some silver trim. It has a subtle but attractive checkered-flag pattern with an anti-fingerprint coating that carries over to the palm rest. The bezel surrounding the screen is a glossy piano black, though, and it is definitely fingerprint-prone. We give high marks to the aesthetic appeal and effectiveness of the FX600’s finish, but consumers looking for something a little more eye-catching or flashy in the crowded mainstream-notebook market may be somewhat underwhelmed by the FX600’s appearance.

The MSI FX600’s footprint measures 15.1x9.8 inches. At its thickest point, the notebook is 1.5 inches thick, and 1.3 inches at its thinnest. And the machine weighs 5.3 pounds, which is about average for a notebook in this class and somewhere between the $699 Lenovo IdeaPad G560 (5.7 pounds) and the $849 Asus UL50Vf (4.4 pounds). Both of these competitors fall into the mainstream category and are geared for entertainment, just like the FX600.

Opening up the MSI FX600 to power it on exposes a few of its standout features, along with a couple of shortcomings. Accommodating a 15.6-inch screen allowed MSI to outfit the FX600 with a full-size keyboard and a number pad. The keyboard features slightly curved Chiclet-style keys with an excellent layout and spacing, but typing on the notebook causes significant flex, which results in a mushy, inconsistent feel. For most users, some keyboard flex won’t be an issue, but for touch-typists who rely on their notebook keyboards to make a living, the FX600’s flex will be a turn-off.

Significant keyboard flex detracted from the MSI FX600’s typing experience. We also didn’t care much for the machine’s dimpled, multi-touch touch pad.

Just below the keyboard, to the left of the center of the notebook’s wrist rest, is a textured, multi-touch–capable touch pad with a single rocker button. In terms of its features and capabilities, the FX600’s touch pad is first rate. The machine also features a touch pad on/off button to minimize unintended cursor movement during feverish typing sessions. In practice, however, its dimpled texture negatively impacted the experience: We felt as though we were running a finger over the bristles of a comb. Also, the touch pad didn’t always register our taps. Thankfully, the rocker button worked well and offered good tactile feedback when pressed.

Above the keyboard is a handful of buttons for turning the volume up or down, launching media players, turning Wi-Fi on or off, enabling the FX600’s TDE (or Turbo Drive Engine) feature, and for powering up the machine. Flanking the buttons on either side are two of the FX600’s four THX TruStudio Pro speakers. The buttons work as expected, so we don’t have much to say about them, but the speakers truly stand out. In addition to the speakers along the top edge of the keyboard, the FX600 has another two speakers behind grilles at the front of the unit. Simply put, the volume and sound quality produced by the FX600’s speaker setup was among the best we’ve ever heard from a notebook. High and midrange frequencies were reproduced with excellent clarity, and there was ample bass, although not as much bass as larger desktop replacements with dedicated subwoofers. Playing back music, movies, and games on the FX600’s speakers was a pleasure.

Complementing the MSI FX600’s excellent speakers is an LED-backlit LCD screen, with a native resolution of 1,366x768 and a glossy finish. That resolution is somewhat low for a screen of this size, but the FX600’s screen makes up for its lack of pixel real estate with very good viewing angles and excellent contrast and brightness. We were very pleased by the screen during day-to-day computing tasks and were especially impressed during movie playback and gaming. With the top resolution being what it is, true 1080p HD movie playback isn’t possible (without scaling), but 720p videos looked superb, and fast-paced gaming produced no noticeable ghosting. While we’re talking about HD video, we should also point out that the MSI FX600 has a built-in Webcam just above the screen that is capable of capturing 720p video at 30 frames per second (fps).

Taking a tour around the edges of the MSI FX600 reveals a useful array of ports and status indicators. On the left side of the notebook, users will find a Kensington lock slot, a power jack, an HDMI output, two USB 2.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks. On the right, you’ll find the FX600’s DVD±RW optical drive, another USB 2.0 port, a VGA output, and an RJ-45 LAN jack. The back of the machine is devoid of any features, but the front houses a pair of speakers, seven status-indicator LEDs (drive activity, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, battery, Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Sleep), and a four-format card reader (supporting the SD, MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, and xD-PictureCard formats). There is nothing extraordinary about the MSI FX600’s assortment of connectors, but the the selection is versatile enough for most users. Another USB port or an eSATA/USB combo port would have been nice.

Ports on the left side of the MSI FX600 include a DC power jack, a Kensington lock slot, an HDMI output, two USB 2.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks.

At the heart of the MSI FX600 is a powerful array of hardware, including an Intel Core i5-450M processor, 4GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce 325M graphics chip with Optimus technology, and a 500GB hard drive. When we taxed all of this hardware with PCMark Vantage, which tests the system’s overall performance, the MSI FX600 returned an excellent score of 5,380. That’s the best we have seen from a mainstream notebook for less than $1,000. Compare that with the Core 2 Duo–based Asus UL50Vf, which managed only a 3,563 score on this test. The Core i3–based G560 fared better (5,059), though both fell short of the FX600. Furthermore, enabling the FX600’s TDE feature, which mildly overclocks the processor, resulted in an even better score of 5,656.

For CPU performance, specifically, the MSI FX600 also returned above-average scores. On our Windows Media Encoder test, the FX600 took 3 minutes and 59 seconds, which is considerably faster than the 6:10 the average mainstream notebook requires to encode our test video. And its iTunes score of 3:14 is also considerably faster than the 4:20 average in this notebook’s class. The FX600 handily beat both the Asus and Lenovo models, mentioned earlier, on both tests, with the Lenovo coming in just better than average and the Asus model falling well below the average.

The same was true on our 64-bit Cinebench 10 test, which taxes all the available cores of the CPU: The FX600 managed a score of 8,308, which is well above the 7,000 average. Most sub-$1,000 notebooks don’t surpass 6,500 on this test.

The right side of the MSI FX600 is home to an optical drive, a USB 2.0 port, a VGA output, and an RJ45 LAN jack.

Thanks to the MSI FX600’s Nvidia GeForce GPU, the notebook also scored well on our graphics-related benchmarks. On 3DMark06, for example, which measures 3D gaming and video performance, the FX600 put up a score of 5,941 when running at its native resolution, which is nearly double the average score for a mainstream notebook. The Asus UL50Vf offers switchable graphics, but it still mustered a score of only 3,348 on the same test. Similarly, frame rates on the DirectX 9 and 10 versions of our Company of Heroes gaming test, again running at native resolution, were 140fps and 24fps, respectively. Frame rates on the game Far Cry 2 were in the low 20s.

Because the FX600 features Nvida’s Optimus technology, the discrete GPU is activated only when applications that will benefit from the additional performance, like 3D games, are running. This is a beneficial feature because the low-power integrated Intel graphics can be used to conserve battery life while doing mundane tasks, and the GPU can kick in when more graphics horsepower is needed. The particular graphics configuration in the MSI FX600 can’t compete with dedicated gaming notebooks, but it's plenty fast for moderate gaming and is perfect for graphics professionals and video buffs.

About the only area where the FX600’s performance is somewhat ordinary is in terms of battery life. With its six-cell battery, the MSI FX600 lasted for only 2 hours and 34 minutes during our DVD-rundown tests, which is right in line with the category average. We had hoped, though, that the Optimus technology would have a bigger impact on battery life. This is also one area in which the Asus UL50Vf shines. It lasted nearly four hours on our test, while the IdeaPad G560 eked out just a few more minutes than the FX600, at 2:45.

The FX600 was relatively free of bloatware. The only annoyance was a constant nagging to activate Norton Internet Security 2010 upon bootup, but that is par for the course with most notebooks these days. Notable freebies bundled with the machine include an ad-supported Office 2010 Starter edition trial, Norton On-Line Backup, and an array of ArcSoft programs (Connect, Magic-I, Print Creations and WebCam Companion). ArcSoft Connect helps manage other ArcSoft apps and download updates and the like; Magic-I is a basic visual-effects app that can add things like frames and themes to video-chat sessions. Print Creations gives users the ability to produce print projects such as greeting cards and calendars, while WebCam Companion lets users capture photos and videos from the notebook’s integrated Webcam and do some basic editing. The machine also comes loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) as the OS. MSI backs the system with an industry-standard one-year warranty and technical support via the company’s Web site or phone.

Despite some scattered minor quibbles, there is a lot to like about the MSI FX600. This notebook offers very good performance, with excellent speakers and a gorgeous screen, for a budget-friendly $899. We weren’t enamored with the amount of keyboard flex we experienced, and the touch pad leaves something to be desired, but overall, the MSI FX600 represents an excellent value and, at $899, a solid buy that easily outperformed the competition. If you want significantly better performance than this, be prepared to spend twice as much.